Gord McCalla (GM), Thorvaldson 281.4, 966-4902, <mccalla@cs.usask.ca>
Office hours: by appointment (to arrange a time send me an e-mail or chat to me after class)
Jim Greer (JG): will teach a couple of the main modules in the course
several faculty members and grad students will give guest lectures (guess the initials!)
MWF 9:30 –10:20, Thorvaldson 124
Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2010, 1132 pages.
4 assignments, each worth 15%
Final exam worth 40%
This course is a general introduction to artificial intelligence, oriented around the autonomous agent metaphor. The topics covered in some detail include:
- foundations and history – what is AI and where did it come from?
- the agent metaphor – why might somebody think a computational agent can think?
- problem solving by computer – how can an agent search through a multitude of possibilities to find a solution to a problem?
- knowledge representation and reasoning – how can an agent know something about its world and reason about that knowledge?
- uncertain knowledge and reasoning – how can an agent deal with an uncertain world?
- learning – how can an agent learn more about its world?
- natural language understanding – how can an agent communicate with us in a natural language like English?
In addition there will be many special lectures on various AI topics, provided by a variety of Department faculty and graduate students. Occasional tutorials may be provided, as well. A projected course outline follows, although this is possibly subject to some change.
| Date |
Topic |
Lecturer |
Assignments |
| Sept. 8 |
Intelligent Systems |
GM |
|
| Sept. 10 |
Intelligent Systems |
GM |
|
| Sept. 13 |
Problem Solving by Searching |
JG |
|
| Sept. 15 |
Problem Solving by Searching |
JG |
|
| Sept. 17 |
Problem Solving by Searching |
JG |
|
| Sept. 20 |
Problem Solving by Searching |
JG |
|
| Sept. 22 |
Problem Solving by Searching |
JG |
|
| Sept. 24 |
Special: Deep Blue and Game Playing |
GM |
|
| Sept. 27 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Sept. 29 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Oct. 1 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Oct. 4 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
A1 due |
| Oct. 6 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Oct. 8 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Oct. 13 |
Knowledge and Reasoning |
GM |
|
| Oct. 15 |
Special: Constraint Satisfaction |
MH |
|
| Oct. 18 |
Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning |
JG |
|
| Oct. 20 |
Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning |
JG |
|
| Oct. 22 |
Special: Causality |
EN |
|
| Oct. 25 |
Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning |
JG |
A2 due |
| Oct. 27 |
Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning |
JG |
|
| Oct. 29 |
Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning |
JG |
|
| Nov. 1 |
Learning |
TP |
|
| Nov. 3 |
Learning |
TP |
|
| Nov. 5 |
Special: Data Mining |
TP |
|
| Nov. 8 |
Natural Language Understanding |
GM |
|
| Nov. 10 |
Natural Language Understanding |
GM |
|
| Nov. 12 |
Natural Language Understanding |
GM |
|
| Nov. 15 |
Natural Language Understanding |
GM |
A3 due |
| Nov. 17 |
Natural Language Understanding |
GM |
|
| Nov. 19 |
Special: CALL |
PW |
|
| Nov. 22 |
Applications: AIED |
GM |
|
| Nov. 24 |
Applications: User Modelling |
GM |
|
| Nov. 26 |
Special: Affect and Motivation |
JV |
|
| Nov. 29 |
Special: Vision and Image Processing |
ME |
|
| Dec. 1 |
Special: Game AI |
KS |
|
| Dec. 3 |
Philosophy: Strong vs. Weak AI, The Singularity, Wrap Up |
GM |
A4 due |